How Walter Williams Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the State

There are close to 7 billion people on our planet. Id like to know how the libertarians answer this question: Does each individual on the planet have a natural or God-given right to live in the U.S.? … I believe most people, even my open-borders libertarian friends, would not say that everyone on the planet had a right to live in the U.S.

Well, thats an easy one: yes, of course each individual on the planet has the right to live anywhere she chooses, so long as she violates no ones rights.

All human beings are equal; being a u.s. citizen does not magically confer special rights on some human beings that are not enjoyed by others. Thus immigrants, as human beings, have every right to buy or lease naturally owned property wherever they find a willing transactor, and likewise a right to homestead naturally unowned property (which describes most of the land in the u.s.). Or has Williams decided to reject the concept of property rights?

Williams goes on to say:

What those conditions [for immigration] should be is one thing and whether a person has a right to ignore them is another.

One may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others? The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. … One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all. … An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. … Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

I have a right to travel freely. That right imposes no obligation upon another except that of non-interference.

If Williams means what he says, then he has just acknowledged his own right to cross the borders of other nations. How, then, can he deny the right of other people to cross the borders of the nation in which he lives?

112 Responses to How Walter Williams Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the State

I want a system of property rights that excludes bigots & racists, to ensure that I won’t have one living next door to me. I can’t properly enjoy my property when my neighbor is there glaring at my immigrant/brown/gay friends.

Mr Long:
Compare a democratic total state that spends over 60% of GDP and you will see that regal expenditures are a pittance by comparison. And if you’re able to allow distinctions at all (and I know you can, in spite of your “ooh, monarchy bad”), you will not cite Versailles as a typical case of monarchy. There, the provincial royal property owners willingly (and foolishly) conceded power and property to be a part of the central court.

And when you say “Aptheker … seems to undermine Hans’s analysis of monarchy” I am tempted to conclude that you reach for invective for want of an argument. Where, in the name of god, does Hoppe advocate slavery, monarchical or otherwise? This is beneath you.

If you maintain that “monarchy isn’t a case of (legitimate) property rights” then you are placing yourself on a wheel of endless regression that absolutely undermines any establishment of property rights. Do you really want to go there?

And this statement is either breathtaking, or a toying with words: “I don’t think we have a right to the ‘value’ of our property; we only have a right to the property itself.” It seems that you want to define property in a purely personal or idiosyncratic way, quite apart from notions of usufruct and power of disposal.

Sergio Méndez:
“Hoppe is more concerned [with a] TYPE of people, just for the place of origin or ethnic status”
As a property owner, he is certainly free to associate crime statistics and race and do as he pleases. See Defending the Undefendable by Walter Block.
As for “you want to force your way on the rest of us”: That does not follow.

Andy Stedman:
“I want a system of property rights that excludes bigots & racists:
Ironically, you support my position. To achieve what you want, you must admit larger associations and property covenants, which leads you regional exclusions of immigrants.

Compare a democratic total state that spends over 60% of GDP and you will see that regal expenditures are a pittance by comparison.

That’s because democratic states have generally been more prosperous than monarchies, and so can take a higher percentage of their subjects’ wealth without killing the golden goose. That’s not an argument in favour of monarchies.

you will not cite Versailles as a typical case of monarchy. There, the provincial royal property owners willingly (and foolishly) conceded power and property to be a part of the central court.

Well, I gave three examples of monarchy. There are plenty more. Power and property in the central court is not exactly an atypical feature of monarchies.

Where, in the name of god, does Hoppe advocate slavery, monarchical or otherwise?

Where, in the name of God, did I ever say or imply that he advocates slavery? If you think that was the message of my Aptheker post, you need to reread it.

If you maintain that “monarchy isn’t a case of (legitimate) property rights” then you are placing yourself on a wheel of endless regression that absolutely undermines any establishment of property rights.

How so? What are you talking about?

It seems that you want to define property in a purely personal or idiosyncratic way, quite apart from notions of usufruct and power of disposal.

Nope, I said nothing of the sort. Of course property involves usufruct and power of disposal. Again, what the hell are you talking about?

If you maintain that “monarchy isn’t a case of (legitimate) property rights” then you are placing yourself on a wheel of endless regression that absolutely undermines any establishment of property rights.

What in the world are you referring to? Do you seriously want to claim that challenging the propriety of any claim to property “absolutely undermines any establishment of property rights?” If so, why do you believe such a crazy thing? (There are lots of mutually exclusive claims made about property rights in this world; some of them have to be false.) Or do you think that the challenge to monarchical property claims rests on some tacit premise that would undermine any establishment of property rights? If so, why do you believe that? The standard radical libertarian objection to monarchical claims is that they are based on nothing but aggression and conquest. (Most libertarians suggest a theory of homesteading based on productive labor, instead; but the negative claim against conquest as a means of acquisition is separable from the positive claim for labor-mixing.) Do you think that ruling out conquest as a means of acquiring rightful ownership “would undermine any establishment of property rights”? If so, why? If not, what’s your beef with Roderick?

Terry Hulsey:

Versailles as a typical case of monarchy

You’re right that Versailles is not typical of monarchy; it’s an extreme example of the trend towards absolutism. But precisely because it is, it ought to be a better example of the kind of monarchy that Hoppe favorably compares to democracy, not a worse one. Hoppe’s whole analysis rests on the claim that the king acts like a proprietor over the entire country. But that far more clearly describes the position of early modern absolute monarchs than it does the complicated system of mutual rights and obligations that existed between overlords and vassals under feudal systems, or the various sorts of elected kingship that prevailed throughout most of the early Middle Ages. If you squint hard enough, “L’etat, c’est moi” might look kinda like the attitude of a landowner towards his or her land; the Magna Carta, say, or the Holy Roman Empire prior to the late 15th century, certainly does not.

“As a property owner, he is certainly free to associate crime statistics and race and do as he pleases”

Nobody said he hasn´t. The point is that, while argain for coercive policies to restrict the entrance of inmigrants to a territory, he is not allowing OTHER property owners who want to associate with inmigrants.

Gentlemen:
We may be at the point where everyone is “dug in,” and the flame-out button grows larger and larger on the keyboard.
Since we are agreed in principle that the issue should be settled by reference to property rights, what do you think about the following as their application to the current immigration mess:

Allow anyone in the U.S. — employers, individuals, groups — to post a five-year bond on anybody they want to sponsor as an immigrant to this country. At the end of the five years, the immigrant presents himself to an immigration office, and, provided that the immigrant has no serious criminal violations, the bond is returned and the immigrant becomes a citizen. If the immigrant skips the presentation after five years and is detained for some unrelated cause (e.g., a traffic violation), he can be deported (or, more humanely, he can repay the bond and/or fine, get someone else to post a new bond, etc.).

In this way, the state — all states — are out of the picture: No national ID, no border fences or guards, no racial profiling. True, there is still the citizenship-granting state (which, incidentally, Hoppe opposed in his article), but the whole backbone of the anarchist transition, which is the replacement of criminal law with civil law, is preserved.

This is the best solution I can offer that argues from our agreed first principles to a practical solution. I’m eager to read your replies.

That seems a bit premature. I offered some arguments, and you made cryptic responses to them that I couldn’t make head or tail of. Why don’t you explain your responses?

Allow anyone in the U.S. — employers, individuals, groups — to post a five-year bond on anybody they want to sponsor as an immigrant to this country.

Who does this “allowing,” and what gives them the right to allow or not allow?

At the end of the five years, the immigrant presents himself to an immigration office ….

In this way, the state — all states — are out of the picture:

If states are out of the picture, who runs the immigration office?

If the immigrant skips the presentation after five years and is detained for some unrelated cause (e.g., a traffic violation), he can be deported

By what right?

True, there is still the citizenship-granting state

Right, so what do you mean about states being out of the picture?

If you’re proposing this as a policy for the state to adopt, how do you plan to get the state to adopt it? It seems more practical to me to follow agorist strategies rather than take-over-the-state strategies; and I don’t see any way to adapt your proposal to agorist strategies.

the whole backbone of the anarchist transition

You seem to be thinking of the anarchist transition as a top-down government program. Why would any government ever adopt such a transition plan? The anarchist transition will be bottom-up or not at all.

* “allow”: meaning “as a departure from current law,” not meaning “deriving from first principles”.
* “out of the picture”: yes, the citizenship-granting apparatus is not questioned in the practical transition; of course we question it in the abstract.
* “backbone of the anarchist transition”: in its barest essentials, the transition from statism to anarchism would replace criminal law with civil law.

It seems that you are satisfied that an absolute open-borders policy is the solution. This is a solution that will satisfy only a small coterie of thinkers, and will not be implemented. Of course, you may reply, “That’s a political problem; I’m only concerned with logical objections to open borders.” To that I say that your conception of property ignores many things that most people find of value in property, namely, its utility in allowing us to associate with some people and not others. From your previous replies, your position is that it does not have that function. In that case, we are at an impasse: I contend that it does, and I offer a practical way to show how it does, and in the real-world context of our current very untenable state of affairs.

your conception of property ignores many things that most people find of value in property, namely, its utility in allowing us to associate with some people and not others

My objection was that you were confounding together different things, some that are part of property and some that (except for Georgists) are not, and lumping them together as “allowing us to associate with some people and not others.”

Property gives me the right to exclude people from my own property; it does not give me the right to exclude people from my neighbour’s property.

Allow anyone in the U.S. — employers, individuals, groups — to post a five-year bond on anybody they want to sponsor as an immigrant to this country. At the end of the five years, the immigrant presents himself to an immigration office, and, provided that the immigrant has no serious criminal violations, the bond is returned and the immigrant becomes a citizen.

This is an absurd, Rube-Goldberg sort of solution that imposes extensive bureaucratic requirements on immigrants for purposes that are entirely unclear. (What is supposed to be the advantage of this arbitrary probationary period for people who you have no reason to suspect of any criminal intent? What’s the benefit to be gained by giving police arbitrary powers to punish traffic stops and noise complaints with exile from the country?) It also clearly cannot deliver what it promises. (How exactly do you think the police are going to identify people to deport after a traffic stop, except through a system of immigration papers, which constitute a de facto national ID?)

I have a better suggestion. How about what we do instead is this: if somebody is on my property with my permission, then they have a right to stay there, unmolested, as long as I am happy for them to stay there. If somebody is own property without the permission of the owner, they can be deported — to the edge of that property.

In practical terms, this would, of course, mean open borders and unconditional amnesty for all currently undocumented immigrants. (Since undocumented immigrants typically live in houses and work in shops they’ve been invited to live and work in; and if they aren’t, well, there’s already laws against trespassing, and the appropriate remedy is to get them off the property, not to strand them hundreds of miles away from their homes.) I am sure that that would make my proposal both unpopular, and unlikely to be brought about through any conventional political process. (As you say, “This is a solution that will satisfy only a small coterie of thinkers, and will not be implemented.”) But so what? Popular beliefs aren’t always right, and if I weren’t comfortable with standing up for unpopular beliefs, I wouldn’t be an Anarchist, or any kind of libertarian. And I would point out that your Rube-Goldberg proposal of bonds and probationary periods is also extremely unlikely to ever be brought about through any conventional political process. (Certainly, it looks nothing like the status quo, and nothing like any immigration “reform” on the table from any political party.) If I’m going to spend my time promoting very unlikely political schemes, then I may as well spend it promoting the very unlikely political schemes that I believe in, rather than very unlikely “compromise” schemes that I don’t believe in.

your conception of property ignores many things that most people find of value in property, namely, its utility in allowing us to associate with some people and not others.

No, what we’re objecting to is precisely that you intend to use the state to stop property owners from associating with the people they want to associate with on the property that they own.

Of course, you have a perfect right to set up your stupid little Fremderein zone of parochialism and belligerent ignorance. On your own land. You have no right whatever to use coercive political means to force your neighbors to do the same.

“Allow anyone in the U.S. — employers, individuals, groups — to post a five-year bond on anybody they want to sponsor as an immigrant to this country. At the end of the five years, the immigrant presents himself to an immigration office, and, provided that the immigrant has no serious criminal violations, the bond is returned and the immigrant becomes a citizen. If the immigrant skips the presentation after five years and is detained for some unrelated cause (e.g., a traffic violation), he can be deported (or, more humanely, he can repay the bond and/or fine, get someone else to post a new bond, etc.).”

Citizenship? Inmigration offices? Bonds for five years? Deportation (for traffic violations!)? I fail to see what that has to do with “property rights” or anarchism at all.

Sergio Mendez:
1 We assume that all property within the U.S. is owned.
2 Therefore, there can be no homesteading or untitled occupation.
3 The owners of all property, by the standard of reasonable care, are liable for what they permit on their property.
4 Therefore, those owners should bear responsibility to some reasonable extent (the extent of a bond), for the immigrants they sponsor for work or association on their property.
5 There must be some agency, whether insurance companies or someone else, to enforce consequences (e.g., deportation) in the event of failure on the bond.

And what if they sell the property to the immigrants, Terry? They wouldn’t own the property anymore, would they? Or are you proposing that the state should forbid people from selling property to immigrants?

How is it that state-socialist dictatorships don’t count as de facto monarchies?

Is it heredity? But even if the biological offspring of a socialist dictator aren’t chosen as successors, the dictator generally has some control over who is groomed to succeed him. It’s true that even with all that, succession can be messy, but the same is true of old-world monarchies. All the legal nihilist stuff about “rights” being no more or less than what you can claim and defend applies just as much to the ancient regime as to corporate democracy or anything else.

That, and the Hoppean argument makes a good deal out of the supposedly lower time preference of monarchs. But even if that’s true, the idea that “lower time preference” leads to “policies that tend to respect liberty and/or increase the prosperity of the ruled” is pretty plainly false, in the real world. (Does not wasting insane amounts of labor and other resources on glorified tombs to ensure prosperity in the afterlife, as the Egyptian kings did, not count as a kind of low time-preference?)

A ruler with lower time-preference may well be more wealthy personally than a head of state with higher time-preference, but who the fuck cares?

“1 We assume that all property within the U.S. is owned.
2 Therefore, there can be no homesteading or untitled occupation.
3 The owners of all property, by the standard of reasonable care, are liable for what they permit on their property.
4 Therefore, those owners should bear responsibility to some reasonable extent (the extent of a bond), for the immigrants they sponsor for work or association on their property.
5 There must be some agency, whether insurance companies or someone else, to enforce consequences (e.g., deportation) in the event of failure on the bond.”

1: You can assume what you want, but in the real world, this simply does not apply.
2: False (in the real world), since 1 is false (in the real world).
3: Fair enough, if only for the sake of argument.
4-5: Why bother retaining some artificial status like “immigrant” if we’re operating on a pure private property rights regime? Do whatever would be done with anyone else who committed the same kind of violation.